Doxology Days

Every once in awhile I have an urge to sing the doxology:

"Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

Last week it happened as I was walking from my new office to the hotel I'd been staying at. The sun had finally come out after days of rain and clouds and as I walked in that sunlight I reflected on the ways that God had blessed me. There were the big things:

A misunderstanding about my wages cleared up.
A 1,000 dollar mistake in my favor caught.
An apartment found.

There were the small but important things:

A prayer request for a ride to the airport answered.
Lesson plans for the first day of class finished.
Satisfaction over the chance to do good work.

I walked in the sunlight and praised God. I'm grateful for doxology days. There are many kinds of days on earth. Not all of my days are filled with sunshine or spontaneous urges to sing. But my prayer is that more and more in all circumstances God is praised in my life.

I have an Apartment

I am no longer homeless (my homelessness has been spent in the Comfort Inn). I have an apartment. It's a small place, but it's in my price range and it overlooks a pool. Apartment hunting has been depressing. I felt like Goldilocks. One apartment was too small, another apartment reeked of smoke, another apartment's exterior was painted a drab brown gray, one place had a nice view but it smelled of mold. I finally settled on a place that had a nice interior and new carpet, but I hated the view--the bay window overlooked the parking lot. I thought--"For this price I can survive the view". But this morning I resolved to look just a little more and discovered a place that looked nice inside and the view beat looking at a parking lot--it overlooked a pool and the apartment complex's main office (see the top picture).

I was surprised that I had more opinion on these matters than I thought I did, but I still went mostly by gut. Actually, I went a lot by smell. If the smell of a place was even slightly off, I didn't want it. Also, I looked a lot at color. For some reason many of the apartments in the area I was looking in were painted a dark greenish brown or a coral pink. I felt depressed just driving into those complexes.

If all goes well, I move in this Wednesday!

*The pictures at the top were taken from the apartment's website. I would just give a link to their website but for my own safety I don't want to reveal where I live.

**Also, the second picture shows a furnished kitchen. I have miles to go before my kitchen will look like the one in the picture.

Hugs

My two year old niece (soon to be three) loves to play a game called hugs. I sit on the ground and say, "hugs". She runs away from me and then turns around and runs as fast as she can at me. When she reaches me, running at the fastest speed her two year old body can manage, she hugs me. We can play this game for several rounds. I love it. The pictures above were taken while we were playing hugs.

Cookie Experiment

I had to quintuple this batch of cookies. I was trying to double it, but I put way too much salt in it so I tried to save the batch by quintupling it. Let's just say the experiment ended abysmally when a very frustrated Julie stuck all the dough in the freezer. My mom eventually baked all the dough I had abandoned.

Now we have lots and lots of chocolate chip cookies in the freezer. Once I opened the freezer and a container of the cookies slid out into my hands. After the container, a carton of ice cream dropped into my hands. "See," I told myself, "The universe is sending me messages today!"

Overheard Conversations

I sometimes enjoy the snippets of conversations I overhear. Here are two recent ones.

1. Elderly lady walking next to elderly man in the library:

"I want to hold your hand. I haven't seen you all afternoon."

2. Sixth-grade boy to a teacher at my school.

Sixth-grader: "Where did you get your bosoms?"
Teacher: "What!? That is not appropriate to say to a woman."
Sixth-grader: "What's wrong? Patrick said that bosoms was another word for shoes."